Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

scrolling up to the top of this thread w/Trump's childhood photo up there is like watching the end of Come and See

As I understand it, the U.S. is pretty much the only country where parties even allow voters to choose their general-election nominees. Anywhere else, Dean Phillips wouldn't even be on the ballot!

― jaymc, Wednesday, December 20, 2023 12:42 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

dean phillips can be on the ballot under the system used in most other countries. he just can't claim to represent a particular party unless he wins an internal process in that party. having a state-run election to decide who will be on the ballot in the next state-run election is not an essential attribute of democracy.

Biden won with clear majorities

I think in large part because people perceived he was probably the only candidate who could beat Trump.

xpost

Especially in states with party registration and closed primaries. Strong case to be made that those shouldn't even be publicly funded, they should be paid for by the parties.

and it's December 2023. The general public -- even Dem voters -- ain't paying attention.

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 20, 2023 1:11 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

its always important to remember that the people who post on the ilxor.com politics thread, along with most of those who are (or were) active on political Twitter, actually make up like the 99th percentile of sickos who actually follow this stuff. you see op-eds now about how the country/media isn't taking this seriously but I think they will once election season comes. people might have forgot this now but 2020 had so much coverage dedicated to Trump's wishy-washy statements about whether or not he would accept a Biden victory and all the things he was actively doing to make it harder to vote, particularly by mail. the plan to encourage in-person voting so it would look like a Trump victory on election day but would shift Biden's way over the next day or two, thereby generating the illusion of foul play was uh...not exactly a covert strategy. it was talked about constantly.

so I suspect for the 2024 election, this is gonna be the story, as much as emails were for Hillary in 2016. reporters are gonna be clamping at the bit to nail him, and every elected Republican, down on this subject. this is the shit they dream about. I don't think he's gonna get tossed from the ballot but if indeed the SC overturns it, is a ruling finding that he's legally ineligible to run according to the Constitution getting reversed by Trump's hand-picked justices really gonna be a good thing for him? especially when said candidate is currently under fire for directly quoting shit from Mein Kampf?

If Trump's off the ballot then Biden might not even run

This is the truest thing said here today imo

Voting for Jesus btw

One of these cycles, I legit hope he's on the ballot

Jesus has often run for downballot offices.

Tax collector

Jesus works a no-show job

Been waiting about 2,000 years or so for him to show up.

Any day now.

My new ILX handle is plainly labeled

we probably do need a containment thread, but fwiw, i vote in local elections and do on-the-ground organizing, a point I have stated numerous times across numerous threads. Everything I have learned from my 20+ years of doing this kind of work and voting with the ethical imperatives that I do has informed my decisions— I haven’t voted for a major party president since Kerry, and I doubt I ever will again.

You have to realize though that the fact that you live in a swing state (that Trump won in 2016) and did not vote to stop him twice makes your complaints about him feel a bit hollow

I mean everyone's free to do whatever they want but I think JCLC made a pretty good point here:

if your efforts defeat your stated goals, then those are not your actual goals

in the last two elections I know people who said they either wouldn't vote or would vote 3rd party because Trump winning would be a "wake up call" for the Dems to stop running shitty centrists. that's not exactly what we got after Hillary lost and imo kind of a hard argument to make when the other candidate is calling the opposition vermin and is openly talking about the poisoning of the blood of the nation. I very much understand the frustration and anguish and disappointment in the people who claim to be "on our side" but, as my stepdad always told me, "it's better than a stick in the eye"

Pretty sure I remember Tabes saying that he didn’t live in PA in ‘16

You have to realize though that the fact that you live in a swing state (that Trump won in 2016) and did not vote to stop him twice makes your complaints about him feel a bit hollow

xp My dad said the same thing, only he called it a sharp stick.

I think I said this upthread, but I first voted in 1984. Since then, I have thought that I was voting for a candidate, rather than against another candidate, in 1992 and 2008. That's about it. Well, I'll throw in 2012. Obama was a seriously flawed president, but if he could have run for a third term I'd have voted for him again, regardless of whom he was running against.

All that is to say, I'm very glad I voted against the assholes I voted against, and will do so again next year.

Obama was a seriously flawed president, but if he could have run for a third term ...

https://uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/get-out-whitford-1.jpg

heh

I actually forgot that was a line lol

Keyes, I lived in California from 2008-2017.

I'll vote for Biden again without holding my nose... yes, his response to the Gaza situation is awful, but I wonder if any prior president would have done anything different (Carter exempted)

When I vote for Biden, I'm voting for his administration more than the individual... and so far, that administration has been pretty effective in passing some legislation that's not completely horrible. The grim possibility of a Trump second term means that we need to circle the wagons and pretend that Biden is the greatest leader that ever lived, assuming he's actually in the general

xpost ok, but in 2020 PA was still a swing state that had gone for Trump 4 years earlier. A lot of people would value casting a vote against Trump in that situation. Sometimes people participate in vote swaps (i.e. someone in CA agrees to vote for the Green Party candidate or whoever in exchange for a swing state voter to vote for the Dem.)

is PA a swing state? Serious question. Before 2016 the last time it had gone red was with Poppy Bush in '88.

Biden beat Trump in 2020 there by 1.15%

You may also remember the lovely senators Rick Santorum and Pat Toomey.

Philly on one side, Pittsburgh on the other with Alabama in the middle, etc.

Lawrence Lessig wrote an op-ed explaining why Colorado’s decision should be overturned which is pretty depressing. Basically the conclusion is he can only be defeated electorally but at the point I have absolutely no faith in collective wisdom that will make that happen.

The compelling reason why the insurrectionist clause was added to the 14th amendment was that the process of reabsorbing the CSA states back into the USA meant that there was soon to be significant number of voters capable of voting for their insurrectionist leaders, both for Congress and President. It was explicitly denying voters their ability to vote for candidates who may have easily won election, had they been allowed to serve. It's sole purpose was anti-democratic in fact and in spirit, as a means of preserving the Union from the baleful politics of half the nation. That clear purpose should invalidate any argument that denying Trump continued access to the office of president is anti-democratic and disenfranchises his voters. The insurrectionist clause is deliberately anti-democratic and designed to disenfranchise voters from electing insurrectionists.

trump will be fine if he just writes a nice letter to andrew johnson

Individual votes don't matter, no one's consumer choice is swaying the future of mankind. In the event that Pennsylvania's vote hinges on one person and the EC hinges on Pennsylvania, you can yell at tables/Kevin Costner.

Scolding as a general GOTV strategy doesn't seem to be particularly effective, though, if 2016 is anything to go by.

Cool, if individual votes don’t matter than none of us should ever vote and we should just sit home and cross our fingers that things move marginally in a better direction by sheer force of will.

Scolding may not be effective but it is fun.

The argument being thrown out here isn’t even that you should vote for Democrats to make a better world - just that you’re obligated to do so in order to slow the descent into a worse world.

Sitting at home and concentrating real hard on change for the better is as effective as your individual vote for Democrats in national elections so sure, do whatever makes you feel good.

If casting that ballot means you did your part to fight fascism, sweet. If not casting a ballot means you didn’t lower yourself to support ethnic cleansing, fantastic. The outcome is the same either way.

You could almost say it’s RIGGED.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/21/luttig-14th-amendment-trump-00132792

It's great to know that the Colorado ruling is legally airtight, and it's also great to know that the Supreme Court is comprised of sober and serious-minded justices who will unquestionably affirm a legally-airtight ruling. I don't see a flaw in this plan! Trump is toast, everybody!

We got him! 🤣

I have always had reverence for the institution of the Supreme Court of the United States, and I have that same reverence for the institution and the current court that I have had my entire life.

Oh wait, I think I see a problem.

How severely do you have to be Ludovico Treatment-ed before you just automatically barf out something like that?

It would seem to me that the Constitution is “bad politics” of late, 2A aside

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3huT9iemFTg

i'm so god damn fucking sick of wasting any time whatsoever thinking about this motherfucker! all time dude

I hear you

Death Was His Art, Dying Himself Would Be His Masterpiece

Maybe it's just semantics, but I find the pundits saying, "let the people decide" a bit disingenuous--considering that losing the popular vote was no impediment to Trump taking office, the argument is more accurately, "let the electoral college decide." I think there's been compelling arguments over the last few years that letting the EC decide isn't that much fairer.

this seems like a situation where Dems should probably take care not to let the GOP control the narrative like they always do, since "the voters should decide, not the courts" misses the point, which is that it's The Constitution that bars him from running - you know, that sacred document they all claim they love so much.

"let the people decide" is just a populist dog-whistle, nothing more